On the afternoon of May 10, the People’s Daily Health Client reported on our hospital’s trial implementation of a new scale for assessing consciousness recovery. Below is the People’s Daily Health Client’s coverage of our hospital:

The transition of a patient from a vegetative state to consciousness is a prolonged process, and accurately assessing this clinical trajectory requires precise and reliable measurement tools. After more than a decade of multiple revisions, the Nanjing Scale for the Assessment of Recovery of Consciousness—designed to evaluate the degree of disorders of consciousness—is currently being piloted at Nanjing Zijin Hospital.

Liu Yafeng, assistant to the president of Nanjing Zijin Hospital, is using the Chinese Nanjing Consciousness Recovery Scale (CNCRS) to assess the severity of patients’ disorders of consciousness.

Currently, the “Nanjing Consciousness Recovery Scale of China,” which is being piloted at Nanjing Zijin Hospital, is a neurobehavioral scale designed to assess the severity of disorders of consciousness. This scale was developed through multiple revisions of the original Chinese Nanjing Persistent Vegetative State Scale (CNPVSS), and its pilot version was published in the fourth issue of 2023 of the journal Chinese Journal of Maritime Medicine and Hyperbaric Medicine.

Ge Jiangping, president of Nanjing Zijin Hospital, explained that the Consciousness Recovery Scale currently being piloted at the hospital is a revised version of the original Chinese Nanjing Persistent Vegetative State Scale (CNPVSS), which was first published in the fourth issue of 2023 of the journal Chinese Journal of Maritime Medicine and Hyperbaric Medicine. The original CNPVSS was initiated in 1996 by Nanjing Zijin Hospital and jointly developed by senior Chinese experts in the field of brain resuscitation. Its introduction established, for the first time, standardized diagnostic and treatment criteria for the “vegetative state” in Nanjing, China. Subsequently, Nanjing Zijin Hospital spearheaded five rounds of revisions, helping to harmonize China’s standards for diagnosing and assessing outcomes in patients in a vegetative state.

Gao Zhiqiang, Executive Vice President of Nanjing Zijin Hospital, also stated that, following more than a decade of repeated revisions, the latest version of the scale now strives to reflect the most recent concepts and theories regarding disorders of consciousness, encompassing the continuum of altered states of awareness—from coma to wakefulness—and featuring refined scoring criteria that better align with the needs of clinical practice.

According to reports, the next step will be to conduct research and validation of the China Nanjing Scale for Consciousness Recovery in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Chengdu, as well as in multiple hospitals across Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces, with the aim of further enhancing the scale’s scientific rigor and accuracy.